French national R&D program on waste from decommissioning: development of innovative plasma treatment processes for the management of radioactive organic liquid waste
Abstract
The operation of nuclear industry facilities and the dismantling sites of end-of-life facilities produce large quantities of radioactive wastes. Their management constitutes a major economic, environmental, societal and industrial challenge. While a large number of these wastes have a management route in existing or future disposal facility, some give rise to complex scientific and technical issues. This is the case for several types of radioactive organic liquid waste (ROLW) whose either chemical or radiological characteristics are not compatible with the incinerator operating rules (high level of 14C and 3H or halogen content, corrosive gas production etc.). Therefore, their treatment process remains to be defined in order to make them compatible with existing or future waste management coordination. Their volume declared through the French national inventory of radioactive waste is a few hundred cubic meters and consists of oils, various organic liquids and scintillating cocktails.
In order to optimize decommissioning waste management and better anticipate related issues, French nuclear waste producers CEA and the French national radioactive waste management agency (Andra) have decided to collectively develop innovative processes to operate these wastes for disposal. In this context, the innovative MILOR project has emerged over the past few years to develop specific thermal treatment processes based on plasma technologies. The MILOR project is a partnership between CEA and Inovertis. It is supported by the French government program (Programme d'Investissements d'Avenir) whose management has been entrusted to Andra.
The purpose of this paper is to present the MILOR industrial research project, which aims to develop two complementary processes for the incineration of radioactive organic liquid wastes using plasma thermal treatment. Thermal treatments can provide interesting benefits such as volume reduction or chemical stabilization, helping waste producer to master costs, schedule, or to optimize final volume and repository safety. In the frame of the project, two processes have been developed to match the waste specificity with the reasonable balance of development, including a market survey, a valorization study, an industrial design and a technico-economic study.